Gena Rowlands in 1968.
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Evening Standard/Getty Images/Hulton Archive
A leading lady of 1970s independent films has died. Gena Rowlands was best known for starring in the smart, quirky films directed by her husband, John Cassavetes.
Rowlands died at the age of 94. Her death was confirmed by the office of Danny Greenberg, who represents Rowlands’ son, Nick Cassavetes. No other details were provided.
Born in 1930, Rowlands was the daughter of a state senator in the now-defunct Wisconsin Progressive Party. She was a sickly, fussy child. But as she told Terry Gross on WHYY Clean air, She is fortunate to have a playful and artistic mother.
“I remember one time, I wouldn’t eat carrots. I wouldn’t eat anything yellow,” Rowlands recalled in a 1996 interview. “So she cut a carrot into the shape of a goldfish…. She put it in a goldfish bowl with water, and she came to me who was sick and she said, `I have an uncontrollable craving.’ She said, `I can’t stand it. I have to eat this goldfish. I have to do it.’ I said, `No, no, no, no, don’t do it.’ She said, `I have to, unless you eat this carrot.’ ….[She] will try my best to be creative to do these things for me.”
In 1950, Rowlands left New York to study acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where she met her classmate Cassavetes. But Rowlands dropped out of school and began appearing professionally on stage, including a small role in a play by Paddy Chayefsky Midnight on Broadway.
She married Cassavetes in 1954. The two began working in commercial television, sometimes together. Rowlands made it clear even fragile characters with verve, and Cassavetes emerged as one of the most distinctive independent directors of his era.
The pair made 10 films together before his death in 1989. Many of their films were shot at their Los Angeles home, with friends such as Peter Falk involved. One of their most famous films, A woman under the influencetells the story of an emotionally unstable housewife trying to please her working-class husband.
“That’s my favorite movie. I loved making that movie,” Rowlands said. movie review site RogerEbert.com. “In that movie, I was a little bit eccentric, but my husband understood that and he loved me, and he didn’t mind that I was as eccentric as I could be. When I had a terrible breakdown and had to go away for a while, away from him and the kids, oh — that was a difficult scene. We were showing a difficult moment in someone’s life, a very difficult moment.”
For her performance, Rowlands was nominated for an Oscar. She would be nominated again in the 1980s. Gloryin which she plays the ex-girlfriend of a gangster.
“It wasn’t really written for me, it was for another actress, but her audience wanted a sexier story,” Rowlands told RogerEbert.com. “I convinced John to direct it, we did it, and I had a great time shooting people, dodging people, chasing taxis.”
Rowlands, who received an honorary Oscar in 2015, played her husband’s sister in his final film, 1984. Stream of loveShe was the mother in a groundbreaking 1985 drama about a gay man with AIDS, Early frostShe also starred in another TV series, The Betty Ford StoryTwo years ago John Cassavetes died. The cause was cirrhosis of the liver, a complication from his years of alcoholism.
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Rowlands starred alongside Mia Farrow in Woody Allen’s 1988 film Another woman. In Jim Jarmusch’s 1991 film Night on Earth, sHe played an older Hollywood woman. was driven around Los Angeles by Winona Ryder, her taxi driver.
Early in her career, Rowlands worked with her mother, an aspiring actress and set designer. Later, as Rowlands’ children grew up and became filmmakers, she acted in their films as well. In her son Nick Cassavetes’ 2004 film The notebookRowlands plays a character with Alzheimer’s disease.
Twenty years later, Nick Cassavetes went public about his mother’s diagnosis. “She was completely insane,” he said. told Entertainment Weekly in June 2024. “We lived, she acted, and now we do.”
